Finns are often trying to promote Santa Claus as their own. In some way, there is a grain of truth in it. As it is, the father of modern Santa Claus is Haddon Sundblom, an American illustrator whose father was a Finland Swedish immigrant from Åland islands and mother was Swedish.

Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976) became a succesful commercial illustrator during his time, working mostly in advertising but he also made lots of pin-ups. He is without doubt most known for his work for Coca-Cola company. For few decades, he illustrated the company's Christmas campaigns and by doing so, turned Santa as an iconographic character we best recognise today. When he started with the character, there were many different kinds of Santas around but Coca-Cola's yearly campaigns became so succesful and well-known that now we have almost a standardized way to represent him.

The book is worth buying if you like classic commercial illustrations, even if you are not interested in the subject. Book has few pages dedicated to how the character was born and developed onto what it is today. It also has a page about Sundblom. The illustrations are from 1933 to 1964. With every illustration there is on the left page a short description of the particular illustration or something about the times when it was done.

And of course, I had to include Sundbloms version of Santa's old lady (from Wikipedia) for the season's sake.